Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/348

 334 A. K. EOGEES : seems to me -that here we have a peculiarly obvious instance of the way in which God is confused with human life ; by identifying the distinction of the self and the world, with the distinction of consciousness and self-consciousness, per- ception and conception, 1 the process by which we turn our objective experience into an instrument that ministers to our own growth, gradually discovering that the world which at first comes to us as foreign has in reality its spiritual value, is transformed, apparently without any hesitation, into the process by which the world that existed before human life appeared gradually comes to consciousness of itself in man.'-' It is not necessary to dwell upon this, however ; the main thing is that, however taken, Prof. Caird's words are mean- ingless except as referring to a real process. But then again he says : " Our conscious life is a realisation in us of perfect intelligence, i.e., of an intelligence which knows all that as self-conscious subjects we have the possibility of knowing, and therefore is all that we can become" ; we have, that is, the realisation of an intelligence which is already realised, " for which the process of development is completed ", 3 How this is compatible with a process in any sense I am unable to see. If in truth this principle of progressive realisation by first externalising the object applies not only to human intelligence but to intelligence everywhere, 4 then God is not eternally realised ; and if he is so realised, then he must lie outside human experience, which is a growth : both things cannot be true of him at the same time. But now the more this static conception drops into the background the more the tendency shows itself to ignore the term self as a de- scription of the Absolute and to fall back on an impersonal process of experience, or consciousness, or life, within which the self is apparently a subordinate category. 5 Now the truth of Hegel's contention I take to be this : The course of human history is a revelation of God, and a real expression of God's life. It is no mere concession to finite weakness, whose end is a knowledge on the part of men of what already exists eternally, but the course of history reveals God actually at work ; and except as he is at work, God does not exist. But there are at least three ways in 1 Cf. Kant, vol. ii., p. 122, and Lit. and Phil., vol. ii., p. 518. 2 Cf. the first, second, fourth and fifth quotations above, with the third, sixth and seventh. See also Kant, vol. i., p. 423, and Evol. of Religion, vol. ii., p. 77: "The whole process of nature is summed up in him. In him the natural world comes to self-consciousness." 3 Kant, vol. i., p. 423. Cf. Lit. and Phil., vol. ii., p. 447. 4 Spinoza, p. 311. 5 Cf. Wallace, Logic of Hegel, p. 35.